Hola from NYC and gracias TYRA!

Posted on November 20, 2008 in: End obesity, Gatric Bypass Surgery, Health, WLS, Weight Loss, Weight Loss Surgery, childhood obesity, obesity

Hola!  I’m in NYC where I just finished taping another episode of TYRA.  The show we taped today won’t air until early January and so I can’t give too much away but let me tell you that it was very interesting and Tyra herself was at the top of her game.  

I have been a guest on TYRA 7 or 8 times.  Many of you know that she devoted an entire show to discussing ing my book, UNDER CONSTRUCTION: How I’ve Gained and Lost Hundreds of Pounds and Millions of Dollars when it was released (you can buy an autographed copy and help raise money for a fund that I started by going to the “books” section of my website and choose UNDER CONSTRUCTION-do it, you’ll enjoy the book and help a lot of people…perhaps a gift for some of the people on your holiday list?:).  And I know that a lot of you watched when after losing 170 lbs. I chronicled my reconstructive surgery on her show; 3 surgeries to remove a total of 10 feet of excess skin and I was able to help one of her viewers, a gorgeous woman named Tanya go through the same process.  I will always be grateful to Tyra for that.  

Since my transforming my own life I have made it my life’s work to help others to do the same.  I honestly could not care less what size you are, I just want you to be healthy and happy.  The issue of obesity is very complex and complicated by the horrible prejudice against obese children and adults.  I think that it is particularly complicated because there seems to be a war between the “I’m fine with myself the way I am and I’m fabulous” crowd and the “I want to lose weight” crowd.  Both sides are set up to oppose each other and the flames of dissent seem to be fanned by stand-up comics and many daytime talkshows.  But today on TYRA, I am proud to say that was not the case.

And here’s what I think about it….

As I write in my book, UNDER CONSTRUCTION, I am a BIG BELIEVER that you should love yourself, celebrate who you are, be proud and insist that the people you choose to include in your life respect you AS YOU ARE!  Be fabulous at any weight, wherever you are in your life.  Confidence is not something that is given to us or reserved only for the rich, skinny and famous.  Confidence is earned.  Confidence is a work in progress and everyday each of us must strive to be confident and love ourselves.  Life is difficult enough without you beating up on you.  A little love goes a long way when it comes to our inner monologue.  But I’m afraid that too often too many of us confuse being confident with being defiant.  What do I mean by that?  Being confident is celebrating who you are and being comfortable in your own skin but that should NOT come at the expense of your health.  “Love where you live but, be open to a little home improvement!”

I know that for many years I was very defiant about my weight.  At 320 lbs I appeared to have a great life; I was a working actress, a published author, a plus-sized model, I’d worked on successful and not-so-successful political campaigns, enjoyed a successful career as a stand-up comic and I always had wonderful men in my life and yet I constantly felt the need to tell anyone who would listen that I was “fat and fabulous”; “llenita pero sabrosa” (plump n juicy:).  And I was.  In all candor, “fat Jackie” had it goin’ on!  But in all honesty, “fat Jackie” was not healthy.  

I come from a family of people with big everything.  We have big dreams, big-loud laughs, big appetites for life, big hair, big mouths and big….well, you get the idea!  And that’s all great except that there is also big tragedy.  My mother died much too young from big livin’. One of my favorite aunts died very young from frankly, being big.  My Tia Pila was one of my s-heroes.  She was the kind of woman who made her own rules and lived life her way-which is exactly why I admired her.  I always admire people who have their own style with a dash of rebelliousness.  But my Tia Pila, like me and many in my familia suffered from morbid obesity.  We didn’t understand then that obesity is a disease which is 100% preventable and curable.  Maybe if we did, she’d be alive today to enjoy life in her own inimitable way.  I know I’d enjoy having her and my Mom here with me.  Unfortunately Tia Pila died as the result of a lifetime of yo-yo dieting.  Tia Pila was a little over 6 feet tall and fluctuated between 170-350 lbs.  She was an amazing Mariach singer with a brilliant singing career in Mexico.  I watched my entire life as she went up and down on the scale.  It was like clockwork; she’d put out a new album and starve herself before her tour to promote it, lose weight, go on tour and the minute that tour bus pulled up in front of my Nona’s (grandmother) house, she’d balloon back up because she had been essentially starving herself.  Finally after years and years of this, she just didn’t wake up.

But I did.

After my beloved Mother and my Tia Pila died suddenly and unnecessarily I had to recognize that I may have been “fat and fabulous” but I was not fat and healthy.  I began to look around and realized that I don’t ever see too many old people that are truly fat let alone morbidly obese.  And at 320 lbs. I had to admit that I was in fact, morbidly obese (100 lbs or more overweight).  It was a tough time for me and one that I know that so many can relate to.  As I often say I had felt my entire life that I’d been sentenced to a life sentence in “fat prison” for a crime that I didn’t commit-I was a chubby kid, a fat teen and then an obese woman-it was in my genes and the only life I knew.  But after much soul searching and a lot of research (obesityaction.org), I made the decision to end my own cycle of self-abuse and opted to undergo gastric bypass surgery.

I didn’t choose to lose weight because I hated myself or thought that I would be a better person if I were thin, quite the opposite;  I decided to cure my disease of morbid obesity by opting for the only known cure which is in fact bariatric surgery because I love my life and want to live a long, healthy and productive life.  My fear is that too many of us who suffer from obesity confuse self-confidence with defiance which keeps us trapped in bodies that are unhealthy.  Gastric bypass is not a miracle cure.  I always say that gastric bypass surgery didn’t clear me of the charges that lead to my life-sentence in “fat prison” but rather gave me unexpected parole.  But there are conditions to my parole and if I don’t follow them, I’ll get sent right back to fat prison so fast it isn’t even funny.  Today I have quit smoking,  I don’t eat refined sugar, I don’t drink carbonated beverages, I exercise regularly and I am grateful every single day for the healthy, active and much easier life that I enjoy as the result of losing and keeping 170 lbs off for more than 4 years.

You see after being a guest on TYRA today I am reminded that fabulous is not determined by the size of my ass, it is determined by the quality of my life.  And I choose to live healthy, happy and fabulously!

Here’s to you and your life being healthy, happy and fabulous!

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FAT KIDS; Are Parents to Blame?

Posted on October 26, 2008 in: Act Locally, End obesity, Gatric Bypass Surgery, Health, Think Globally, Uncategorized, WLS, Weight Loss, Weight Loss Surgery, childhood obesity, obesity

 

8-years old, chubby and starving!

8-years old, chubby and starving!

Have you heard about Momlogic.com?  It is a great resource for Mom’s and anybody interested in making life better and easier for familias.  I am not a Mom but felt compelled to comment on a post that I found particularly narrow minded called, “Fat Kids: Are Parents to Blame?http://www.momlogic.com/2008/10/are_parents_of_obese_children.php 

 Here’s my first post:

Jackie Guerra on October 23, 2008 7:30 PM wrote:
I was a chubby kid, a fat teen and an obese young woman. At the age of 8 when my friends weighed anywhere between 50-70 lbs, I weighed 110 lbs. I, like other fat kids didn’t “choose” to be fat. 
Point #1: an 8-year old is not grocery shopping or making “lifestyle” decisions about what/when to eat, for themselves. I was an active child. I played sports; soccer, gymnastics, swam almost daily and danced from age 4-18. Contrary to the popular opinion and hurtful stereotypes of fat kids, I did not sit around playing video games or watching tv while stuffing my face with candy and potato chips. 
Point #2: Neither of my parents are or ever have been obese. My mother was the eldest of 6 and my father is the middle child of 7. Most of their siblings are morbidly obese. Both my brother and I. We ate breakfast every morning as a family, my mother packed our lunches everyday and we ate dinner every night as a family. My parents did EVERYTHING THEY KNEW HOW TO DO Like many my parents saw the commercials and the shows and read the books and watched the shows that touted this diet and that diet.  The  diet industry is  massive and has a very well-funded public relations/media machine designed to convince us that their product is the answer to our problems. My mom put me on my first diet at 8 years old. I was given “diet shots” by a Doctor at 11 and was taking my daily weight-loss pills every morning before school before I ever had my first kiss or began menstruating.  I was always deprived and made to feel like I was lying about what I ate and I was bad.  That is a TERRIBLE thing to do to a child.  I was on every diet known to man for 25 years. By the time I was 34 I weighed 320 lbs.  And that’s, bad.
Point #3: We now know that in fact there is an obesity gene. Some people are predisposed to obesity just as some people are predisposed to skin cancer.  In both cases we know what triggers the disease so personal responsibility is very important.  Certainly there are behaviors that contribute to whether or not the disease is triggered. My brother and I, like many of our ancestors, carry the gene along with millions of others.  We have seen a dramatic rise in childhood obesity especially in communities of color and lower income communities.  There can be NO DENYING that obesity is also directly linked to your economic status. You can buy a lot from the $1.00 menu at any fast food restaurant and feed a family of 4 for less than $10.00 but to buy fish and vegetables to steam for a family of 4 will cost a minimum of $20.00. For many Americans it is a question of economics.          

So who is responsible? In my opinion, we all are! We are all responsible for allowing fast-food chains and corporations to market calorie filled/nutritionally void foods to our kids. Remember, we not only vote on election day (and PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO VOTE ON TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4) but we also vote every single day with our dollars.  Every time we spend money we are saying, I like your product and I agree with what you.  It’s not complicated.  It’s very easy.  Just like a person campaigning for elected office in the end only has a job if you vote for them and they are elected, grocery stores, fast-food chains, restaurants, companies who manufacture inexpensive food; they only profit if we elect them by spending our HARD EARNED money on their product(s).  DON’T SPEND YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY ON SOMETHING THAT IS MAKING YOU AND YOUR KIDS FAT AND UNHEALTHY – OR WORSE! If skin cancer ran in your family you wouldn’t send your kids out to bake in the sun without protection.

So how do we protect ourselves?  By getting active and empowered.  It is very simple and it begins as the late great Cesar Chavez said, “We can change the world the same way we eat tortillas; one at a time.” Change begins with you and me believing that we deserve better and committing to doing something about it; that’s change.  That creates a movement.  Personally I think that it is criminal the way that large profitable companies continue to load their product with the very things that they/we KNOW is killing us; high fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, hormones, etc. It infuriates me to make my way through our nation’s airports only to see fast-food after fattening after disgusting and all ridiculously overpriced foods that are making every one of us unhealthy not to mention, broke. And we allow it because our tax money subsidizes the businesses in our airports. Also why do we allow such unhealthy food to continue to be served in our public schools? That’s OUR TAX MONEY paying for it. Ever wonder why it is as gross today as it was when you were in elementary school? Because for the most part the same companies have had the same contracts for generations. They are also by the way, the same companies hired by our federal and state governments to feed our inmates. It is a business and the last thing they are concerned with is the health of your child. But they do get paid by your tax dollars which are distributed by people that you elect. So we vote on election day and every day with our dollars. Let’s get heard! Guess what happens when you get out and vote and elect someone?  YOU are their boss.  YOU hired them!  So YOU need to hold them accountable.  In my book, UNDER CONSTRUCTION: How I’ve Gained and Lost Millions of Dollars and Hundreds of Pounds (Penguin/NAL), I wrote a chapter called “Think Globally, Act Locally“.  I am a BIG BELIEVER in the great Ghandi quote, “Be the CHANGE you want to see in the world“.  A 5-minute phone call to your local School Board Member that you are angry about the food your child is served – on your dime – at school.  A quick call to your City Councilperson telling them that you don’t appreciate the amount of fast food and unhealthy food available at your local mall is okay and that until they insist that the mall management company that your elected officials granted the lease to offers delicious, affordable and healthy options, you will not spend $1.00 of your hard earned money there. A 3-minute face-to-face chat with the manager of your local grocery store telling her/him that you don’t appreciate all the sugar-filled/nutritionally void food at your child’s eye level.  Suggest that instead of cookie samples that they give fresh food samples and let them know that until they do you will shop at their competitor.  I promise, it works!  

And lastly how many of us suffer silently each month when we pay our ridiculously overpriced insurance premiums.  What is insured?  I don’t want to invest in a company that if I God forbid need medical care will make it nearly impossible to get all the services and medications and therapies needed to BE HEALTHY. Shouldn’t insurance companies be in the business of preventative care to ensure that we stay healthy, active and productive for as long as possible?  Makes a hell of a lot more sense to me for insurance companies to cover the cost of nutritional counseling, and gym memberships so that families can exercise regularly AS A FAMILY.  Sadly there are many too many communities in our great country where little kids don’t have yards and there aren’t safe parks for them to play in.  Does it make sense to anyone that an insurance company will pay for medication after medication that kids and adults REGULARLY take for 100% preventable illnesses like Type II diabetes, etc., all caused by obesity?  I have yet to find anyone who thinks it makes more sense to cut physical education programs from our public schools and keep on serving tater tots.  We really have a lot more control over all of this than we act like we do.  Every 47 minutes someone DIES from an obesity related complication. We call these complications many things; type II diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, gout, joint problems, etc., but they all stem from the same thing; obesity. The things that WE KNOW will prevent many diseases aren’t covered by most insurance company policies and that, in my opinion is criminal!  It doesn’t have to be this way.  We can change it!

FAT KIDS; Are parents to blame?  I say, hell no!  Parents need help  Please, let’s stop persecuting parents. Let’s stop being mean to ourselves to fat kids. Let’s stop teaching our kids that fat is the worse thing you can be.  Let’s please stop blaming each other and start helping each other.  We can do it, YES WE CAN! Let’s work together to make life healthier, happier and more exciting for everyone!  Whaddya think?  

In good health, mucho love, humility, sisterhood, gratitude and solidarity,

JACKIE GUERRA
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I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES!

Posted on October 24, 2008 in: End obesity, Gatric Bypass Surgery, Health, WLS, Weight Loss, Weight Loss Surgery, childhood obesity, obesity

I believe in voting, sexy shoes, a great handbag(s), naps, walking, yoga, quality vs. quantity, laughing loudly, dancing wildly, kissing often and I believe in bariatric surgery… But it wasn’t always that way…

 In February 2004 I had one of the most demoralizing nights of my life. I went to a black-tie event to support a friend. It was pouring rain—and I had a fever. I should have stayed home, but I didn’t want to disappoint my friend, so I met my glam posse at the hotel… only to realize that I hadn’t brought the slip for the sheer dress that the good people at Torrid had sent for me to wear on the red carpet. I was in the middle of Beverly Hills—but miles from anything plus-sized.

I usually felt worse on the inside than I looked on the outside, because as a fat girl who grew up in Southern California and the daughter of an alcoholic, I knew how to keep it together on the outside even when all hell was breaking loose inside. But that night I looked as bad as I felt. Yet, I strutted down that red carpet in my size 32, see-through dress with every roll, stretch mark and dimple on display, smiling and posing for the cameras like I was on top of the world. But I was sick, and inside I was dying.

The next day my cough and my fever were worse. I went to see my doctor. It was the kind of bright, sunny So-Cal day that makes most people happy, but it just made me mad and sweaty. I took great care with my hair and makeup. I looked cute in my bathroom mirror, but by the time I crossed the parking lot from my car to my doctor’s office, I was a sweaty mess.

The waiting room was full of skinny chairs and skinny people. I began to cough uncontrollably as I signed in. I realized there was nowhere for me to sit, so I put my sunglasses on and leaned against a wall, trying to maintain a veneer of dignity while I continually shifted my weight to take the pressure off of my joints, and sweated. 

My doctor, all 110 pounds of her “naturally high-metabolism” self, is a lovely and brilliant woman, but seeing her always came at a high emotional price, because it meant a confrontation with my life-long nemesis: the rickety medical scale—the metal beast. When it was my turn for an examination, Dr. Sarang bounced in… shivering. “Great to see you, Jackie! It’s freezing in here!” She was cold. I haven’t been cold since I went snow skiing in the 7th grade. She was shivering. I was dripping with sweat.

“Let’s get your vitals done so we can figure out what’s going on. Still smoking?” Oh crap! “Yes, but I’m cutting back and planning to quit soon.” I surprised even myself with that answer, since it was news to me as much as it was news to her. As if on cue, I began to cough. “That does not sound good.” She took my temperature, looked in my ears, my throat, up my nose… thumped on my back, listened to my chest, checked my blood pressure. “Blood pressure is a little higher than I’d like it.” She listened to my pulse. “Okay, hop up onto the scale for me.”

I got up with the grace of a drunk staggering from a curb. “What hurts?” Dr. Sarang asked. I explained, trying to distract her from the metal beast as she moved the markers from 150 to 200 to 250 to … Oh my God … 308 pounds! She said, “If you don’t get a handle on your weight, it is going to seriously affect the quality of your life.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I surprised myself as I began to sob. I was trapped. I was a caged animal. I couldn’t breathe. I surprised myself again as I heard myself saying, “I’ve been on every stupid, crap diet in the world and it’s always the same thing; I spend time, money and energy, starve myself, deprive myself, feel terrible, lose weight and then gain it all back plus more. It’s exhausting and depressing and I’m so tired. You have to help me. What is wrong with me? I’ll do anything. I’ll fast, take shots, shakes, whatever it takes—just please help me.”

I expected her to recommend some new diet program, but what she said changed my life: “Have you ever considered bariatric surgery?” “You mean stomach stapling?” I replied. “Well, that’s inaccurate and crude, but yes, that’s the idea,” she said. I was horrified. Dr. Sarang thinks I’m such a loser that I would take the easy way out and get my stomach stapled? She sent me home to rest and research. Aside from achy joints, high blood pressure and being told that I was morbidly obese, I also had a case of walking pneumonia. 

There were three significant problems with my thinking back then. First, like most people I was ignorant. I thought there was something wrong with me because I was fat. I didn’t realize that obesity is a disease. Second, my “knowledge” about bariatric surgery was also ignorant—it came from tabloid media and people’s opinions rather than facts. Third, I kept doing the same thing expecting a different result—and that’s the definition of insanity.

I spent that night scouring the internet for information on obesity and I realized that I could be cured. Obesity killed my aunt—it kills one person every 47 minutes—but obesity is preventable and it is curable. I read, I thought and I began to seriously consider bariatric surgery.

After many weeks of research, attendance at support group meetings, talking with WLS veterans and surgeons, nutritionists and obsessively looking at people’s before-and-after photos—proof that miracles happen—on April 14, 2004 I underwent laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery at Cedars Sinai Hospital with Dr. Phillipe Quillicci.

I have lost 173 pounds and gone from a size 32 to a size 2. I have kept my weight off for more than three years! I love my life. I wake up every day pain-free; my blood pressure is perfect; my labs are perfect. My husband and I regularly exercise together—and now I love to sweat. I eat less, sleep less, complain less, worry less, stress less, fear less and need less. All of these things are miracles—miracles of WLS.

 Too many people think of WLS as a one-stop-chop-shop or carwash where you go in at 308 pounds and come out at 135 with a perfect life. Nothing could be further from the truth. You take yourself everywhere you go. WLS is not a cure for bad habits, bad relationships, addictions, negative people, obnoxious bosses or high gas prices. WLS is a valuable and effective tool when used correctly, but it’s not magic. WLS is one of the best things I’ve ever done but it is also the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I believe that I am a better person today, but not because I’m thin… because I’m stronger, healthier, wiser and more productive. I believe in miracles, and…I absolutely, positively believe in weight loss surgery!

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Hello world!

Posted on October 9, 2008 in: Uncategorized

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

7 Comments